


Rot

by judgehangman



Category: Makai Ouji: Devils and Realist
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, POV Second Person, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-23
Updated: 2017-06-23
Packaged: 2018-11-18 00:04:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11279586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/judgehangman/pseuds/judgehangman
Summary: "You are beautiful and you are cursed, and your holiness is rotting underneath."A character piece about Sytry.





	Rot

**Author's Note:**

> Despite the warnings, there is nothing actually more than heavily implied. Still, be careful when reading if those subjects are triggering to you.
> 
> There's very minor solodan and danwi.

You are a child.

Your mother stands in the shadow. She watches over you as a you explore the playing field, and butterflies nestle on her shoulders and her arms: she remains so still every little bug in Heaven thinks she might’ve grown roots. Her wings — crystalline formations on the surface of her body, protecting the softest parts where the skin is more easily bruised — they cover phantom handprints on her neck where her short hair can’t reach. She writhes underneath their grasp, wavering with the wind like tree leaves, but they still choke her words and her love out of her lungs.

You dance around her, unaware of her stillness. The flowers you’ve threaded on her hair look like they sprouted from her head itself, horn-like branches doused in sunlight. She looks like a forest devil in the making, bloodstained holiness encased in girlhood, hollowed out of everything sacred contained within her.

Her worth is measured in blood: how many lives she has taken, how many months her womb has bled, her blood in your veins. She does not dare say it out loud, but she knows they deem her unholy — and yet, they have always secretly done so. She’s known the pain of womanhood from the moment she was created woman, delicate knees and easily bruised skin, and her brothers likened her to Eve. She has always been less holy than them.

You drift away from her line of sight and that’s when she moves, her voice a panicked bell. Her fingers grip your thin wrist with force and her nails dig into your soft flesh. She does not mean to hurt you, but she hurts you still, and the blood drips into the grass. It doesn’t hurt too much but the sight of blood scares you, so you cry out and she lets you go.

You wish she would hug you and wipe away your tears, but all she does is heal your wrist and watch you cry with emotionless eyes. No one ever told you why she always looks so empty, or why she stands so still as if she hopes she will be mistaken for the trees and no man will ever want to touch her again. You do not ask because you do not notice, and she does not say because she does not dare to.

“Come, Sytry,” she says, and you step into the shadow with her. “Your father is waiting.”

* * *

 

You are a child and the only monster you’ve ever feared is your uncle.

You used to call him father, you think, but he says it is only because he’s adopted you when you were very young. That makes sense, you think, and your uncle is very kind. You do not want to think about what would happen to you without him. He says he loves you very much and he kisses you like he means it. You love him very much too, you think, but sometimes you wish he would not touch you like that.

Sometimes you wish he would not touch you at all. But you swallow that wish, and don’t allow it to be expressed out loud, because your uncle is so kind and loves you so much, you feel so ungrateful for thinking those things. You falter one day and tell him not to touch you on an impulse, and he strikes your pretty face with the back of his hand.

He apologises to you like it physically pains him to have hurt you, and you eat up his words because he is kind. Still, he rips off your wings like cutting the pinions off a songbird so it looks pretty but doesn’t fly away. You do not fully understand the concept of falling, besides the one that’s engrained into the soul of every angel, and you do not feel like the demon you are supposed to be.

But without your wings, you can no longer protect the parts of your body that are more easily bruised, and your soft foundations are quick to turn purple in his hands. You cover yourself with feather-like linen, hide away the pain with smiles and poised beauty because children are supposed to be seen, not heard, but he does not like you to be covered and promises you he won’t hurt you so much next time.

Yet he is smooth words and sudden anger, a shadow hovering in your wall when you try to hide underneath the bed. The castle has too many hiding spots you are small enough to fit in, until he starts filling them up one by one and the only place you can hide in is inside your mind.

Your body is a grave to your emotions, a monument to childhood trauma, and your bones too delicate not to break underneath his rough hands. He fills you up with blood and dirt until you’re gone, away from the world where he exists in. You lay still. So still, you hope you’ll melt into the bed and wash away like the blood on his bedsheets. You never do.

When you were younger, you used to cry. You used to pray for your mother to save you, used to beg for her and apologise to a God you believed punished you for existing. You know better than to cry now. He covers your mouth when he has no use for it anymore, and you swallow down your tears and anything he force-feeds you until your stomach is full of misery and bitterness.

He gives you flowers for your birthday and their smell makes you feel sick. It permeates your bedroom, the corridors, your skin; a perfume so sickly sweet it reminds you of putrefaction. You think it is only fair. You are beautiful and you are cursed, and your holiness is rotting underneath.

The flowers wilt away and die, and you bury them in the garden, hoping their smell will vanish with them. It takes weeks for it to wash away from your skin, but you still scrub yourself raw until you can no longer remember their putrid smell. On your next birthday, he gifts you a dress instead.

* * *

You are not a child and you fall in love with a man who thinks you are.

Estranged from his people, no one’s son but sin’s, he empathises with your wingless desire to flee. You tell him you wish you could rise among the stars, fly away to a place where your pain no longer exists, dissipate into stardust. He smiles at you sadly, tells you he wishes for so little in this world and yet wishes you happiness, and you cry in a way you haven’t done in a long while.

There are butterflies in the royal garden and they do not avoid you and part of you hopes, desperately, that he has made you holy again. They flutter around you with curiosity and land on the flowers in your hair, and Solomon laughs at you for that. He says it’s _cute_ and you think the butterflies must’ve landed lower in your body because you can feel them tickle your stomach, but when you look down there is nothing there but your unblemished skin. He pokes your cheek, leaving a trail of sugar on your face, and it takes you longer than it should to let your hand fall back from the place where he’s touched you.

He has many lovers, and not enough time to pay attention to all of them, but this doesn’t bother you. You spend your afternoons with him in the quiet of the library, balancing with him over a pile of books. You’ve never seen a man so sad, but he smells like Heaven and you feel like home when you’re with him.

You two are never alone and you understand it is because so many people wish for his company, but you cannot help the rush of anger that colours your cheeks whenever you notice Dantalion in there too. He stands so still his flesh might’ve turned to stone, and doesn’t speak unless spoken to, and watches Solomon like a guard dog. Solomon urges you not to pay attention to him, but he confesses he also doesn’t know what Dantalion is hoping to accomplish. You think you can understand, because there is desperation in Dantalion’s eyes, and you wonder if demons who were never angels long for Heaven too.

One afternoon, Dantalion isn’t there, and you can see by the concern in Solomon’s eyes that they fought again. You don’t understand what they fight so much about and why Dantalion always comes back if he wants to leave so much, but Solomon just shrugs and tells you he doesn’t understand it either.

He offers you a hand and you take it without thinking, and your heart flutters when he touches you. You remember when you sealed the contract, how soft his lips were against yours, and you’ve longed to feel him that way again ever since. He smiles, kindly, and tucks your hair behind your ear and pokes your nose and says _you are so beautiful, Sytry._

You think he is beautiful too, sun-clad and marvellous and cruel. He dances with you in the sunlight, spinning you around carefully, and laughs as he puts flowers in your hair. Your chest feels full for the first time in forever, but he steps away when you try to kiss him.

You don’t ask him why and he never says, but you are filthy and he is holy and you were a fool to think he would ever want to touch someone like you.

* * *

You are not a child and you do not quite fall in love with a boy who thinks you are.

William Twining is a strange person because the first time you talk to him under no pretences he makes you scrub the floor for disobeying a school rule. Your knees sting and your joints pop, and he forces your hips down in what you think is petty revenge for the night he’s had. It makes you smile, and though afterwards your body hurts and it annoys you to think royalty like you is being treated like a servant, it’s hard for you not to laugh.

You do not like being punished, not in the way Dantalion so obviously does, so you stay out of the way and try your hardest not to be caught breaking the rules. Of course, you won’t _stop_ smuggling sweets into the school by the hands of not-so-secret admirers, but what William doesn’t know, he cannot punish you for. Even though it falls short sometimes, William doesn’t seem to care as long as it does not compromise him, and turns a blind eye to your antics because he is too busy personally cherry-picking everything Dantalion’s ever done trying to find ways to give him detention. You are glad for that.

Humans are interesting, though their talking isn’t terribly stimulating. You find more comfort in the silent afternoons with William than the incessant babbling of your followers, because you have no need to fake anything for him. William seems to enjoy your company for who you are, and he listens to the things you say with more than polite interest, and you find yourself entrapped by his musings about the universe.

You can’t help but compare him to Solomon, but as time passes that comparison becomes nothing but superficial. William doesn’t feel like Heaven, he is every bit as human and flawed as he claims to be, and it’s the awkwardness of his teenage years that makes the butterflies in your stomach wild. Solomon had claimed your heart with his perfection, his smooth words and the way he irradiated light, and yet it’s William’s flaws that makes you drawn to him.

There is no need for you to be holy with so someone so mundane, and he touches you with no concern for whether he is tainting himself with the dirt in your soul, and you think perhaps that is what love is like. You do not say that you love him, the word tastes strange in your tongue like you’re not quite sure it’s the right one, and William does not say that he loves you either but you think he must.

You don’t realise how much of it is wishful thinking until you see what love truly looks like in his eyes. By then, it is too late for you to say something, and what kills the butterflies in your stomach are the flames you should already have seen coming.

Much like Solomon did before him, William loves _Dantalion_. And Dantalion doesn’t seem to notice, he is too busy wallowing in on his self-pity — as if he has any real problems — to notice anything that doesn’t fit his narrative that the world is out to get him. _Of course_ , you think, _it’s always him_.

You could laugh.

* * *

 

You are not a child and all you’ve ever wanted was power.

You used to think if you were stronger, then you’d be able to escape your uncle’s grasp. If you were stronger, then you could kill him without fear of what would happen to you without his protection. If you were stronger, then maybe you could soar back into Heaven and reclaim what had been stolen from you.

If you were stronger, then maybe William would love you.

It’s a funny thing because you are stronger now and though some of those things might be true, it is only because you are now a puppet to a new master. Metatron doesn’t hold you as closely as your uncle did, but his grasp on you is just as tight. You convince yourself this is what you’ve always wanted, that this power is your birth right, and you pretend not to see that you are being used.

Metatron has ascended you as an angel and yet you feel as if you’ve been sanctified posthumously. Your body is a grave to your very being, an ode to unrequired love, embalmed in tragedy and brokenness and envy. He bathes you in lily water, a sarcastic remark about a title you do not deserve, and their sickly-sweet smell embeds into your flesh. The flowers are too fragrant and it gives you a headache, and though he says it suits you, all you think it does is make you smell like a funeral.

He tells you to explore, if you so wish, and you walk away from him as quickly as your legs allow you. You let them carry you, with no destination in mind but _away_ , and they only stop when your erratic thoughts do. You stretch your wings and it hurts, in the way muscles do after not being used for a long while, and the tears in your eyes are from more than just the pain.

It takes you hours to stop crying. You don’t know why you do so, if out of hysteria or relief or both, but you feel better after you’re done. There are no mirrors in Heaven for you to fix yourself, vanity is hardly accepted, so you make do with what you can find. You wash your face with water from a river: it’s cold on your skin and helps pat down the puffiness around your eyes, and you admire yourself in the current.

There is nothing visibly different about you. You find the same childlike innocence in your eyes that you hate so much, the same round cheeks and delicate chin. Your features are still gentle and your fingers are still thin and your fragile skin is still easily bruised. You feel powerful but you do not look powerful and you wish you understood how _he_ does that.

You do not understand he’s learnt to look tough after so many years faking it at the face of powerlessness, the same way you’ve learnt to perfect the cold detachment that keeps you safe. You do not understand so you resent him still.

The horns sound across the sky. They resonate within you, shake the ground beneath your knees, and you let your palms rest on humid dirt so you can feel the way it vibrates. It is dreadful and horrifying and it makes you feel alive. You stand up in a frantic need for movement, let your feet leave the ground in a fluid grace even other angels would envy, and you make your way towards Etemenanki.

You are greeted by an army that isn’t quite sure why they are there, and archangels who almost feel contempt towards the fact you are now their general. You have no experience with leading or real war, and you feel infinitely small in front of them. But power surges within your veins and you find it easy to command when you’re riding its high.

As you watch them descend, you stand still. Not still enough to trick the birds into thinking you are a tree, but enough to trick the other angels into thinking this is what you were always born to do. Metatron smiles at you and you know it’s insincere — the coldness in the look you give him could rival your mother’s glacial scowl.

* * *

You are not a child but you feel like one.

It takes you too long to realise that William _does_ love you, that there is nothing inherently lesser in the fact that he loves you _differently._ You think you understand now why so many years ago Solomon stepped away from you when you tried to kiss him, and you feel so small and stupid and naive that you’re surprised your turmoil doesn’t make its way through your mouth as a wail.

William begs you to reconsider, to think this through, to fight the haze Metatron has put you under and understand your real motives. _Did you choose this yourself?_ He asks and you want to answer the obvious, but phantom hands around your neck choke the words out of your lungs and you say nothing.

There is sympathy in his face. He calls out to you and asks you to return home, to him, his arms open as if he wishes you’d rush towards him and bury your face in his chest the way you so desperately want to. He does not care whether you are holy or not, whether you’re an angel or not, and it’s the first time you dare to think you were the one measuring your own worth in blood.

The war shatters your illusion before you can reach back to him.

Everything you see and feel is a blur after that.

* * *

You are not a child but it’s okay that sometimes you feel like you are.

William Twining is a very strange person, you think. He is mostly the one who makes you feel like a child, even though for a while you wished he would see you as anything but. There is an ancient sadness to him that didn’t exist before, a tiredness that doesn’t fit his youth, but he’s starting to smile again so you think everything might just be alright after all.

He is gentle and soft and very, very tough. You’ve never realised there is strength in being fragile until you watched him break and reassemble himself whole. He told you about how bones toughen up after a fracture, something he learnt when he broke his arm when he was very little, but that they would eventually even out with time.

“Does it hurt?” you asked him, and he smiled.

“Yes.” Then, after a moment, he added, “breaking a bone hurts too.”

You think William is very wise, in an awkward teenage way. He might not know much about the truths of the cosmos, or the nature of angels and demons, but he understands people and understands himself and understands love, even if he does not want to admit it. He tells you your worth isn’t measured in arbitrary things, that what has happened to you does not define how deserving you are of being understood and protected and loved, and you understand now how someone like him managed to love someone like Dantalion. How someone like him managed to love someone like _you_.

One night, when everyone has left to bed and he’s promised Dantalion with an eyeroll he will join him soon, you tell him about the things that have been done to you. His hand hovers above your spine in horrified silence, and you laugh when you tell him the memories that have been haunting you for so long.

You do not know why you laugh, but the words spill out of your mouth all at once even when you try to keep them inside. You don’t wish to tell him in so much explicit detail what your uncle, your _father_ , has done but the words don’t stop and you don’t stop laughing.

It’s only when your laughs turn into hysterical crying that he breaks out of his shock, and wraps his arms around you as you cling to his shirt and bury your face into his chest and pray that he does not mind that you are filthy and your holiness is rotting underneath your tainted flesh.

_I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry_ , you cry out as if you have something to apologise for, and William says nothing as you cry. He holds you and that’s all you could’ve asked for, because you don’t think there is anything he could say to make this better.

When the tears stop coming and you finally quieten down, your head resting on his lap tiredly as if you wish to just sleep and maybe disappear into stardust, William rubs circles on your back and whispers things to you that you cannot understand.

“Sytry,” he calls after a while and the severity in his look makes you feel so small. “I need you to understand something.”

You brace yourself for what you’ve always known was coming, for him to be disgusted at you and tell you that a creature filthy like you does not deserve to be an angel, that your holiness is stolen and you are profane, that that’s what you get for being cursed with this beauty.

Instead, William says:

“You were a child and none of this was your fault.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Lele for the brilliant idea about Gabriel smelling like a funeral. Though this is obviously not what you had in mind, it fit the themes of this fic so well I couldn't not use it.
> 
> -  
> Please let me know if you need anything else warned!


End file.
